Miscellany and Trivia

"The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul," Freud once declared, "is 'What does a woman want?'"

Arriving at an airport one day, Bernstein was asked by a photographer if he would mind posing for a picture astride a motorcycle. Bernstein objected. "I don't ride a motorcycle," he said. "It would be phony." The photographer tried to persuade him. He showed him the controls, explaining briefly how to operate them. "I'm sure you could ride it if you tried," he said encouragingly. Bernstein climbed onto the machine and, to the horror of his colleagues, shot off at top speed across the airfield. After a few other maneuvers he returned, grinning broadly. "Now you can take your picture," he announced. "I'm a motorcycle rider."

Desmond Tutu is the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, South Africa. With a smile and sly wit, he is able to make important points with a minimum of bitterness, which is perhaps why he was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

He demonstrated this skill in a recent speech in New York City, where he stated, "When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said: 'Let us pray!' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, the tables had turned: we had the Bible and they had the land!"

Agatha Christie's second husband, Max Mallowan, was a distinguished archaeologist who made his name excavating in Mesopotamia. On her return with her husband from the Middle East, Agatha Christie was asked how she felt about being married to a man whose interest lay in antiquities. "An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have," she said. "The older she gets, the more interested he is in her."

A good friend, Jessie Duarte, remembers how Nelson Mandela always made his own bed almost offending the Chinese.

“He always made his own bed, no matter where we travelled. I remember we were in Shanghai, in a very fancy hotel, and the Chinese hospitality requires that the person, who cleans your room and provides you with your food, does exactly that. If you do it for yourself, it could even be regarded as an insult.

So in Shanghai I tried to say to him, ‘Please don’t make your own bed, because there’s this custom here.’ And he said, ‘Call them, bring them to me.’

So I did. I asked the hotel manager to bring the ladies who would be cleaning the room, so that he could explain why he himself has to make his own bed, and that they not feel insulted. He didn’t ever want to hurt people’s feelings. He never really cared about what great big people think of him, but he did care about what small people thought of him. That used to amaze me. He didn’t mind if he insulted a very important person, or said something to them that was unkind, because he said they could fend and fight for themselves. But he would never insult someone who did not have power.”

Jan Nicolaas Kind – Brazil

Voltaire once said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" (the Western God is masculine). It has been human habit for centuries to call on God in times of distress. Therefore it may be true that God was indeed invented by human beings to provide comfort and shelter in this hostile and violent world of ours. If so, was God made in our own image, apparently for our stability and security? Does today's world bear testimony to being an ocean of stability and tranquility?

In the West, dominated by the Christian tradition, there are many doctrines about God. But at the same time, in Europe in particular, there are many who have predicted that humanity will develop into a godless future. Those who predict such a future have found support among those who claim that God is only a name for everlasting emptiness and that any perception of God is nothing but a poor attempt to have nothingness explained. But then the question arises of how one clarifies something that isn’t there.